Steve Sinnott

Steve Sinnott, who has died suddenly aged 56, was elected general secretary of the National Union of Teachers (NUT) in 2004, and was regarded as the best leader the union could have for these difficult times. In a union which has always had warring factions, he was a unifying figure. He was about to lead the NUT into strike action over a pay rise of 2.45% with inflation running at 4% - the fourth annual pay cut in a row, he said. The last NUT strike, 21 years ago, was not a success, losing the NUT both members and prestige: Sinnott, as president, deputy general secretary, and then general secretary, played a considerable part in winning them back.

He was determined that this one was going to be different, and there is no doubt that his calm, reasonable, thoughtful personality would have helped make it so. It would also have defused the inevitable sneer that the NUT did not care about children, for the charge would never have stuck to a man so transparently committed to the job he had done for years before he became a full-time union official.

Born into a working-class Liverpool family with strong socialist traditions, he was the son of a worker at Ford's Halewood car plant and went to West Derby comprehensive school, Liverpool. He graduated from Middlesex Polytechnic with a BA in social sciences in 1974, and trained as a teacher at Edge Hill College in Ormskirk, where he joined the NUT.

He taught humanities and was NUT school representative at Shorefields comprehensive school in Toxteth, Liverpool, before moving, in 1979, to Broughton high school near Preston, where he was head of economics and business. Website tributes from former pupils recall his effectiveness and friendliness as a teacher.

In 1986 he was elected to the NUT's national executive, and, in 1994, he became the union's president - the first former comprehensive school pupil to hold the post, as he proudly pointed out. The presidency is held by a serving teacher, but during his year of office he was elected to the full-time post of deputy general secretary, from which he stood for the top job 10 years later.

He was the first general secretary for many years to be on good terms with the union's hard left, and able to work with them. Though he was not their candidate for the job, they took to him, and the campaigns the union supports - for non-selective education and against academy schools - benefited from his tenure.

At the same time he forged an equally good relationship with colleagues in the office, including those who had been rivals for the job. He set in train useful but undramatic reforms in the union's organisation that did not require redundancies. He addressed the longstanding problem of regional officials having too high a load of casework by providing them with assistants at a lower grade who could handle the more routine cases. A warm tribute from Gordon Brown, the prime minister, confirms that, despite the looming strike, he was also successful in ending the angry standoff which had started under his predecessor, Doug McAvoy, when Charles Clarke was education secretary.

One result was that the NUT conference in Manchester last month was the most united that anyone can remember. Sinnott had taken trouble to make sure none of his members felt under attack. He found a way of so arranging union policy that it did not offend, for instance, either faith school teachers or those whose pupils went into the army.

He was also able to establish himself on the international stage. He claimed that "teacher unions in both Israel and in Palestine have no closer friend than the NUT" and was active in bringing the two together, chairing Education International's advisory committee on the Middle East. Fred van Leeuwen, the EI general secretary, yesterday also drew attention to the key part he played in drawing up a protocol about teacher recruitment designed to prevent Britain from asset-stripping Commonwealth countries of their teachers.

But the strike would have been his biggest challenge so far, and he had prepared meticulously. He took every opportunity to hammer home the message that a reduction in teachers' pay is bad for children: it leads to recruitment and retention problems, and people teaching well outside their subject areas.

He is survived by his wife Mary, herself a talented teacher, his son Stephen, daughter Kate, and two grandsons.

· Steve Sinnott, teacher and trade unionist, born June 24 1951; died April 5 2008

Christine Blower, acting general secretary, NUT, writes:

When Steve Sinnott delivered the 2007 Hugh Gaitskell memorial lecture at the University of Nottingham he summed up his philosophy thus: "I think there are those who are hopeful supporters and activists for justice, human rights and equality and there are the rest. Those who exude hope and optimism generate the energy and stimulate the progress that we in education and progressive trade unionism work for. I find it is such people who are as fascinated as I think I am by the liberating power of education in this country and across the world."

Steve was a staunch advocate of education as the means of lifting the underprivileged out of poverty. It was this vision which led him to campaign enthusiastically throughout his life for comprehensive education in England and Wales and for the right of children to education wherever in the world they lived. In both his full-time union posts, Steve extended the scope of its international work.

He won admiration for his support for the Ethiopian Teachers' Association and played a key role in the international campaign for the release of its president Dr Taye Woldesmiate, who Steve visited in prison in Addis Ababa, and who was eventually freed in May 2002.

A supporter of the goal of one union for all teachers, he worked to improve relations with both the NUT's fellow unions and with the government, while continuing to oppose the workforce agreement and to campaign for improvements to pay and conditions.

Steve often said that he planned to retire around 2014 and return to teaching. Those who knew him knew that some of his future lay in a school in Africa.

However, this was not to be. A committed family man, a lifelong Everton supporter, keen cyclist and caravanner, Steve will be sorely missed not only as a teacher and trade unionist but as, to borrow a favourite phrase of his, "a smashing fella".